Sources for the history of ethnic schooling in Brazil. Italian schools in the State of São Paulo according to Arturo Magnocavallo

Abstract

Ethnic schooling constitutes one of the least explored fields of investigation in historiography. However, in recent years, driven by the increase in transnational approaches to historical-educational research, there has been an increase in studies and the availability of documentary heritage useful for launching in-depth investigations into the development of schools in migratory contexts. Among them, that relating to the Brazilian state of São Paulo, where hundreds of thousands of Italian migrants flowed between the end of the nineteenth and the early decades of the twentieth century, deserves particular attention. The report transcribed below, written by Arturo Magnocavallo after a specific mission to sound out the conditions for the foundation of a secondary school, offers us a significant cross-section of the Italian school reality in the São Paulo context at the beginning of the twentieth century.